Stories from the Road: Pat Miletich

Room Service

Pat
Miletich can travel back to a time when he was driving in those
cramped, cranky U-Haul trucks, a folded cage in the back, rumbling
along some dim backroad managing to hit every conceivable bump and
pothole on the way to Who Knows Where, USA. The
Ultimate Fighting Championship’s first welterweight titleholder
remembers when people actually scratched their heads and wondered
what mixed martials arts was.

Miletich was a prophet then -- it was only 20 years ago -- as he
helped advance a sport and, to a point, a way of life that has not
only grown exponentially in the United States but internationally.
It is why, when talking to the MMA legend, you get the visceral
feeling Miletich has “been everywhere and done everything.” “The
Croatian Sensation” can honestly claim he has fought or coached in
almost every nook and cranny across the country. Though he never
does, he can say he helped pave the way for Chris
Weidman, Anthony
Pettis, Daniel
Cormier and Robbie
Lawler.

Miletich’s little excursions in the mid-1990s, during which he
would have to build the cage and then tear it down after an
exhibition that might have garnered a few hundred bucks, built
traction for today’s stars. It led Miletich to strange hotel rooms
in Las Vegas, some wacky off-the-wall places like Kuwait and
sometimes even into harm’s way outside the cage.

“I remember winning $5,000 in a winner-take-all, and I thought it
was all the money in the world,” Miletich said. “I dumped the money
on my hotel bed and rolled around in it.”

That was when he had to work three jobs. He would pour concrete
during the day, go train for a few hours and then bartend one place
and bounce at another. That arduous cycle went on for four years,
until Miletich was able to make enough money fighting to do it
fulltime.

“It all comes down to how bad you want it,” Miletich said. “Guys
back then wanted to fight. I wasn’t going to stop, but I also had
to pay bills at the time and that meant working a few jobs. Guys
today will roll around for 45 minutes, do some jiu-jitsu and then
they’ll talk for a half hour. Then they’ll start rolling again.
When we were training, it was two hours nonstop whatever it was we
were doing. What I have a problem with are people who on sparring
night, because they’re not a great striker, don’t show up; or if
they’re not great wrestlers, on takedown night, they just won’t
show up. They won’t show up for their teammates who are getting
ready for fights. Things like that bother me. I have no patience
for it, to be honest. I couldn’t understand that mentality and
never will, especially in a sport like MMA.

“You can golf half-assed, be really talented and win a couple of
local tournaments and have fun with it. In MMA, to a lot of people,
it’s become the new skydiving,” he added. “They just want to do it
once before they die. I have a problem with that mentality of
getting into a sport where you can get that badly hurt and not
commit to it 110 percent. A lot of people do it so they can go in
bars to pick up chicks saying they’re MMA fighters. That’s the
mentality a lot of people have today.”

WRONG ROOM, WRONG TIME

Despite the hangover, Miletich was feeling pretty good that
morning. The previous night, his fighter, 6-foot-8 giant Tim Sylvia,
retained the UFC heavyweight title by knocking out the 6-foot-10
Gan
McGee in the UFC 44 co-main event at the Mandalay Bay Events
Center in Las Vegas. Everyone celebrated Saturday night after the
fight -- everyone, that is, except McGee and his crew.

The next day, Miletich, along with another member of his team,
Tony
Fryklund, wanted to check on Sylvia. At the Mandalay Bay, every
floor is identical, each level shooting out like spokes in a wheel,
with the hallways of the rooms jutting out in different directions.
That is what Miletich and Fryklund thought they had navigated.

(+ Enlarge) | Photo: D. Mandel/Sherdog.com

Sylvia was a Miletich disciple.

“Tony and I got off at what we thought was the 36th floor, walked
to the end of the hallway where Tim’s room was and knocked on the
door,” Miletich said. “A couple of guys answered. We walked into
the suite and there was a Sony PlayStation sitting in there and
boxing gloves, focus mitts, training gear, all of that sort of
stuff ... bags and suitcases, you know, stuff that you would see in
a fighter’s hotel room.

“We assumed the guys that let us in were a couple of Tim Sylvia’s
buddies from Maine. We never met them before, so we assumed they
came to watch Tim fight,” he continued. “So we’re talking to them
for a little while and saying that it was a great fight. Tim had
knocked Gan out, and we were pretty pumped about it. There were
some Krispy Kreme doughnuts sitting there and we helped ourselves.
We’re talking to them, and one of the guy’s faces was all swollen.
I asked him what happened to his face. It was like an infection a
body builder would get on his ass cheek from shooting steroids.

“I started joking around with him -- ‘What are you, shooting ’roids
in your face?’ -- and making a joke about it. They didn’t think it
was funny,” Miletich added. “We asked where the big guy was, and
they told us he’s in the bathroom. After about five more minutes of
conversation, Tony and I both get up and yell, ‘Hey Tim, get the
hell out of the bathroom. We came here to see you!’”

That was when the situation became surreal.

“The guys we were talking to get up and tell us, ‘This isn’t Tim
Sylvia’s room; this is Gan McGee’s room!’ Here we were making fun
of these guys, talking about the fight, eating their doughnuts and
realized we were in the wrong suite on the wrong floor, and it
happened to be Gan McGee’s. We started laughing so hard that both
of those guys thought we did this on purpose and yelled, ‘You guys
are complete a—holes. Get the hell out of here!’ We stumbled out of
the room laughing. We could barely get down the hall we were
laughing so hard.”

A few months later, Miletich ran into McGee and explained the
mistake.

“McGee goes, ‘My buddies were so pissed off at you that they
thought you came down and did it on purpose.’ I told him we walked
into a suite at the exact same location Tim’s room was, but Tim’s
room was on 36 and we hit 34,” Miletich said. “We hit the wrong
floor by accident and walked to the same exact area where we
thought Tim’s suite was.”

However, the mishaps and hijinks were not over that weekend. As
Miletich, Fryklund and Sylvia were standing in line ready to check
out on Sunday, Miletich noticed something as Sylvia was looking
down at his bill. It brought Miletich back a few days prior.

“I’m in my room Friday night and Tony calls me up and says, ‘Hey
man, come down to the VIP pool. There’s topless strippers
everywhere and everything is for free; Chuck Zito is here, Bas Rutten, all
of our guys,’” Miletich said. “I went and we all had a lot of fun.
I ordered food and had a beer or two. Everyone was having a great
time. That was it. Tim wins the fight the next night, [and]
everyone is happy. Let’s go home.”

(+ Enlarge) | Photo: Freddie
DeFreitas/Sherdog.com

Fryklund went along for the ride.

Only everyone was not happy. Two days later, Sylvia was raising a
stink and creating a scene at the check-out counter. The
receptionist told him his balance was $2,800 for “the VIP pool.”
Sylvia asked for the manager, pleading his case.

“Tim is freaking out screaming at the guy, ‘You must have the wrong
guy!’” Miletich said with a laugh. “Tim told them he never spent
any money down at the VIP pool. He told them, ‘There is no way I
would have a party the night before the UFC heavyweight
championship, trust me.’ I turn around and it dawned on me that
suddenly Tony Fryklund begins to slink in behind a couple of people
in the check-out line and hides.

“Tony, while saying the VIP pool party was free, was signing Tim
Sylvia’s name on all of the receipts,” he added. “Eventually, they
worked everything out and Tim was able to take care of it. Tony
wasn’t getting off free, though. We wanted to have some fun with
him. A few months later, we decided to throw Fryklund under the bus
and tell Sylvia who signed his name in Vegas. Tim pretended he was
angry and chased him all over the gym trying to kill him.”